Abstract. Water management throughout the western United States largely relies on the partitioning of cool season mountain precipitation into rain and snow, particularly snow as it maximizes available water for warm season use. Recent studies indicate a shift toward increased precipitation falling as rain, which is consistent with a warming climate. An approach is presented to estimate precipitation-phase partitioning across landscapes from 1948 to the present by combining fine-scale gridded precipitation data with
coarse-scale freezing level and precipitation data from an atmospheric
reanalysis. A marriage of these data sets allows for a new approach to
estimate spatial patterns and trends in precipitation partitioning over
elevational and latitudinal gradients in major water supply basins. This
product is used in California as a diagnostic indicator of changing
precipitation phase across mountain watersheds. Results show the largest
increases in precipitation falling as rain during the past 70 years in
lower elevation watersheds located within the climatological rain–snow
transition regions of northern California during spring. Further development of the indicator can inform adaptive water management strategy development and implementation in the face of a changing climate.
Supplementary material to "Technical note: Precipitation phase partitioning at landscape-to-regional scales"
